Wiep has a good idea, and i like it. In fact i like it so much that i’m not going to repeat it here and advise you to visit his article right now!

SEO copywriting: Searchwritten - A Study in Content SEO

1. link out (instead of hoarding pagerank)
2. link internally (like Wikipedia does)
3. build strong topic pages, and keep them updated
4. have resources ready (both technological and editorial) to pull this off. Probably only big sites can do this.

I’ve been propagating this strategy for a while but haven’t had much success with it because i couldn’t reference cases where it worked out great. Now, i do: I can simply point to the New York Times site, Answers.com, and this video :)

SEO copywriting: Searchwritten - A Study in Content SEO

I work for a big publisher. My colleagues are typically young, smart, woman, and yes, beautiful. They are very good at what they do, but have no (or little) technical background. That’s all right, but of course I have to get the message across. I won’t reach that by showing off my knowledge of HTML.

The best way to explain stuff, is to try to find out what your target audience already knows, and use that to connect your knowledge to theirs. So what do all journalists, editors, and professional bloggers know that we can use?

The 5Ws

Every journalist knows the principle of the 5Ws : Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How. Et voila: there you have your most important keywords.

Tell them to use these in the first couple of sentences of the article, but also in the description and metatitle. This is the most technical part: to show where in the backoffice the meta-description and metatitle are used, and where you can see them in Google.

If someone asks WHY to use the 5W’s, and not for instance a snappy headline, then simply tell them that that is not what people are looking for in Google (back it up with data if necessary).

The inverted pyramid

Traditional journalism is all about the inverted pyramid: put the most important content on top, and less important info at the bottom.

That however, sucks both for SEO and for web copywriting. People don’t read (only) the first sentences. They scan, and then decide what (and if) to read.

The way to write for that kind of reading, is to NOT use the inverted pyramid, but to put the important content (the 5W’s) throughout the article: in the beginning, middle, and end. It helps if this repetition varies: use a text, a list, an image, a subheading, etc.

Synonyms

Good writers use synonyms. It makes their writing more lively, and less boring. It’s also a good way to use more keywords. It makes sure that keyword density doesn’t get too high and the LSI part of SEO copywriting is covered also.

That’s it. These three principles of journalism work fine to explain SEO copywriting. It’s good for the audience to know that writing for Google does not conflict with good writing in general, and also that they were taught well at school and can use that knowledge for SEO copywriting.

And as always, I’m really curious about the way you tackle this, so leave a comment :)

SEO copywriting: Searchwritten - A Study in Content SEO

Google itself is quite dangerous:

And of course we all know that the Happy Tree Friends are very dangerous!

After trying to visit a page from the SERP, G displays some nasty warnings, does NOT provide a link to the page in question, but does provide a link to a diagnostic tool, which is broken:

SEO copywriting: Searchwritten - A Study in Content SEO

The different thing is that I wanted to witness the online marketing bizz from another perspective. Not as an external consultant, but as an internal specialist. Less consultancy, more operations. It’s another experience, another way of looking at things. Also, because of the size of the Ilse network, it’s quite a challenge!

I like the fact that Ilse is located in one of my favourite cities (Amsterdam), and that they have graffiti and Wii’s :)

For those of you who don’t know Ilse: it’s the largest Dutch internetpublisher (8.6 million uniques/day) and has sites like nu.nl, startpagina.nl, kieskeurig.nl etc. [overview].

SEO copywriting: Searchwritten - A Study in Content SEO

Ow, the video is here.

SEO copywriting: Searchwritten - A Study in Content SEO

You also told them that it is a good idea to do so, because:

• it generates a lot of relevant content;
• people use the same words to describe something as they would when they search for it;
• these people are looking closely at your products and site, and talk about it … publicly. If they like it, you have fans. Everybody knows how important fans are;
• and a couple of reasons more I forgot to mention.

Your client is excited: ‘yes, I want user generated content for my site. Gimme gimme gimme!’ Now it’s up to YOU to actually make it work… What can you tell them?

Below is my own list of items I think about whenever this need arises. Every situation is different of course, and it’s probably far from complete. But it should give you something to work with. Use it for your own benefit.

And while we’re talking about co-creation anyway: if you’ve got additions, drop a comment!

Goal defining

What do you want to reach? It should fit into the goals that you’ve already set for the business as a whole, and the website in particular. So what sub-target (KPI) is the addition of user generated content supposed to reach? Think about stuff like:

• generation of unique content to support rankings;
• generation of quality content to support rankings;
• both the above;
• establishing a fan base;
• higher conversion rates (user generated testimonials);
• etc.

Situation

What has already been done:

• Is it already technically possible and easy for users to interact with the website?
• Is the content displayed on the same URL it’s supposed to support?
• is it hidden or shown in full sight?
• Are there enough visitors already on the website that will start to interact immediately?
• Or do you need to kick it off yourself?
• what does the competition do?
• can you handle criticism?
• can you handle moderation tasks?

Users

The users (including the business owners) of the website are crucial, of course. What do you know about them?

• What kinds of users does your website have?
• how many visitors?
• how many of them convert into buyers?
• Can you display their presence in a percentage(%)?
• Can you track their presence? (more info)
• What part would each group of users play in the content creation process? Think about: commenting, just reading, moderation, etc.

Gains

What reasons would each group have to interact. What do they gain from it. Think about reasons like:

• curiosity
• meaning
• to belong to a community
• doing good
• reflection
• ease, comfort, gain
• status (within the community)
• coping
• testify
• etc

They’re all psychological reasons – and needs. This part of your analysis is critical, because YOU are the one who has to think of a way to fulfill these needs. If interacting with a website makes a user feel good, they interact with the website. So what should the website OWNER do, to make someone feel good about interacting with the website? The same principle applies to the other needs, and the other types of users. This is a one on one translation from user types to needs to facilitation of needs.

Reputation and fear of communicating

That being said, there is another thing you should think about. Do you WANT people to tell others about your products? Can you handle criticism? Do you have people avaliable to monitor incoming reactions? Do you WANT to monitor it? Are you willing to LISTEN to the reactions people give? Is your organization equipped to deal with the influx of a lot of comments/reviews? Can you finance it? In general: do you have fear of communicating with your clients? If so, I would advise to get rid of that fear first (or the reasons of that fear) before you start communicating.

One example: a comic book store

Let’s say that you have a comic book store and that you sell your inventory online. You have a number of goals, but let’s assume the most important one is sales generation. The website already has a number of visitors and some of them, most notably collectors, are passionate about your products.

What you should do is collect some data first: visitor/user types, number of visitors, website KPI’s, etc. After that, you can start a brainstorm: what are their needs and how can you address those needs? The brainstorm is intended to come up with ideas about gains that address the already formulated needs of user groups.

A couple of types of users are: comic book readers / commenters / drawers / buyers / collectors, etc. The table below could be the start of a nice matrix:

The table above is just a beginning, not complete, and could probably be better visualized, but the idea is clear, I hope ;)

Conclusion

The most important thing I’m trying to tell here is that you must have insight about:

• the goals
• the users
• their (and your) needs
• how YOU can facilitate fulfillment of their needs
• how THEY fulfill your needs
• how that fulfillment adds to reaching your goals
• rinse, repeat…

In short: user needs

SEO copywriting: Searchwritten - A Study in Content SEO

Both considerations are valid! But they seem to oppose each other. I still see many discussions about using Nofolows or not. But they all revolve about this basic dilemma: spamfighting versus user friendliness / linklove. So it seems that both sides are in a stalemate.

Why?

Because they can’t compromise.

Introducing the Dutch model

The Dutch are known for the way they handle opposing interests. In politics, opposite factions sit together and talk about their differences. They won’t stop until they’ve reached a compromise. It’s tiresome, but works rather well and the Dutch model is named the ‘poldermodel’. I’m not a sociology professor, but I think it has something to do with an old heritage in trading, capitalism, and above all: making money. Making money is all about seeing win-win situations. You give me and I give you.

There is a win-win situation in using Nofollows. Let me explain it with a metaphor.

Protect your house, and invite friends for dinner

Just like my weblog, my house is my territory. I lock the doors when I’m away, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want the world to taste my delicious pumpkin soup! If you happen to be at my house and I have it ready, I will probably let you have a taste (to all my friends who’ve never had my soup yet, it’s just a metaphor, but you’re welcome to come over and try the real deal ;)).

But one thing I will NOT do, is leave my door and windows open so that everybody can just grab some without asking me. I have no idea who it is. Maybe they’ll use my soup to sell it to others!

No soup for you!

CHOOSE when to give linklove

But I do invite friends to come and eat, drink, maybe play some Wii games, watch a good movie, talk about life, politics, the web, etc.

And that is exactly the same with my weblog. I close the doors, but let friends and other people I like come over and have a good time. With searchwritten, I Nofollow, but provide linklove to people I like. If I like your blog, I’ll let others know. If you don’t have one, I’ll sphinn/Digg/whatever your submits. I’ll let people know you have an interesting Twitter acount, etc, etc.

As ar as I am concerned, this is common sense, and not even worthy of such a polemic discussion.

SEO copywriting: Searchwritten - A Study in Content SEO

Watch how the pros do it. All of us get examples of it every single day. No, I’m not talking about Adsense adverts (though they are good too!), but spam. They’re sitting right there in your spambox… We know this already. But where do THEY get their inspiration?

This morning one spam mail passed the spamfilter and incited me to click. I usually don’t do that, but this one grabbed my attention. I’ll just show it first:

Ofcourse I only saw the headline first: ‘Naked mman superglued to exercise bike during heist‘. It sounded like a hilarious headline (I receive a number of newsletters every morning) and I clicked… Shit! Spam! LOL

I immediately remembered one of the greatest headlines of all time (new York Post, 1982): ‘Headless body in topless bar’.

Spammers learn from the best also :)

SEO copywriting: Searchwritten - A Study in Content SEO

What does the tool do?

• it displays your title, description, Url, and page size on the fly;
• it calculates how many characters you have left.

It takes a different number of characters than I do: a title-tag has 70 characters (I use 65) and a description has 156 (I use 150). I think Google will occasionally test with different lengths to display, so I usually make them a little bit shorter. This does not mean that a perfect title or description is *always* 70/156 characters long! (just read my ‘for dummies’ posts about that).

Will I use it a lot? No, but it might be useful for people who haven’t looked at the SERPs as often.

I use a spreadsheet program (Excel) to write titles and descriptions. With some simple formulas, you can check the number of characters in a cell and display in the next column. So we’ve set the maximum number of characters for a title on 65. The column next to that displays the number, and colors it red if it becomes higher than 65. This way, you can edit a LOT of titles/descriptions a lot easier.

SEO copywriting: Searchwritten - A Study in Content SEO